Sep 15 2018 07:57 AM
I have a workbook and I have a list of people in the worksheet titled "Short List" once they are qualified, I move them to another sheet "Qualified".
Yesterday the Qualified sheet stopped showing the values of the cells from "Short List" and will only show the link, (i.e. ='Short List'!D31).
Not sure what is up, have never encountered this before. HELP!!!
Sep 15 2018 08:02 AM
Hi Donald,
Please check in ribbon Formulas tab if Show Formulas is not active
Sep 15 2018 08:12 AM
Sep 15 2018 08:34 AM
Donald, and you you sure these cells in question are not formatted as text? If, for example, you reformat cells from General to Text after the clicking they will show you the formula only
Sep 15 2018 09:03 AM
Sep 15 2018 09:11 AM
If you could submit the file removing all sensitive information and keeping only few cells (which work and ones in question) that will be easier to check.
Sep 15 2018 09:38 AM
Sep 15 2018 10:03 AM
Solution@Donald McAlister, the problem is if your source cell formatted as text the linked cell is automatically reformatted to text when you enter or edit formula (more exactly when you switch on cell edit mode by clicking on it or by F2)
After that it shows the formula, not linked value.
It's something new for me, but Microsoft published the support article about the issue in April this year https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/135506/cell-linked-to-text-formatted-cell-shows-formula-not...
I'd recommend to change your source format (column D and others) in Short List sheet on General, when it works. Please note, you have to reformat you column with links in Qualified back to General. I did that for E column (Short List) and Column M (Qualified) in attached.
Sep 15 2018 10:08 AM
Sep 15 2018 10:23 AM
Donald, you are welcome. That was useful for me as well, didn't know about that issue before. On the other hand I never use such cell links.
Sep 16 2018 10:04 AM
Hi Sergei,
This issue is new to me as well!
The surprise is that this issue exists even in earlier versions of Excel (I've reproduced it in Excel 2010)!
Sep 17 2018 01:38 AM
Hi Haytham,
I guess that's since we don't use linked cells. But thank you for the sharing, interesting to know that's quite old issue.
Nov 17 2022 10:05 AM
@Sergei Baklan I know this solution is several years old at this point, but I just wanted to chime in and say thanks, I had this very same issue come up today and it was driving me nuts. I would have never figured out what the problem was.
Sep 15 2018 10:03 AM
Solution@Donald McAlister, the problem is if your source cell formatted as text the linked cell is automatically reformatted to text when you enter or edit formula (more exactly when you switch on cell edit mode by clicking on it or by F2)
After that it shows the formula, not linked value.
It's something new for me, but Microsoft published the support article about the issue in April this year https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/135506/cell-linked-to-text-formatted-cell-shows-formula-not...
I'd recommend to change your source format (column D and others) in Short List sheet on General, when it works. Please note, you have to reformat you column with links in Qualified back to General. I did that for E column (Short List) and Column M (Qualified) in attached.